Galaxy, United Both Seem to Be in a World of Hurt
Tonight’s Major League Soccer game at the Rose Bowl could not have come at a better time for Washington D.C. United.
If that seems an absurd statement to make about the league’s sorriest team, a team with a league-worst 4-13-6 record and a team that hasn’t fielded the same lineup or won consecutive games all season, think again.
It’s not a matter of how bad D.C. is but of who its opponent is.
When Coach Thomas Rongen’s defending league champions line up they will be looking across the field at . . . well, what exactly?
Luis Hernandez and Cobi Jones won’t be there to torment them. Neither will Mauricio Cienfuegos nor Ezra Hendrickson. Gone, too, will be Robin Fraser and Greg Vanney.
All six Galaxy players are with their national teams for World Cup 2002 qualifying play.
Throw in that Los Angeles defensive midfielder Danny Pena is out for the season after knee surgery and the Galaxy is a mere shadow of itself.
Coach Sigi Schmid, of course, casts a large shadow, and if anyone is able to piece together a winning combination from the remnants, he can.
Even with seven of 11 starters absent, the Galaxy can mount a threat.
Luckily for Schmid, four starters remain. Kevin Hartman will be in goal, with Paul Caligiuri and Danny Califf in front of him in central defense. Simon Elliott, the New Zealand midfielder who has been the team’s steadiest player all season, is available too.
So, Schmid will need to build around that quartet.
Chances are, he will start Zak Ibsen and Adam Frye as his other two defenders, wide right and left, with Peter Vagenas as the attacking midfielder in Cienfuegos’ place and with Sasha Victorine alongside Elliott in the position Pena normally occupies.
Schmid can call on Brian Kelly or Ivan Polic as his wide player in midfield, and will use Sebastien Vorbe and Seth George as his forwards.
It’s not ideal, but then again, it’s only D.C. United, a team the Galaxy already has defeated three times this season.
The lineup leaves a few options on the bench. Apart from backup goalkeeper Matt Reis, Schmid still has midfielder Jorge Salcedo, forward Marvin Quijano and either Kelly or Polic to send into the game if needed.
“If we play it smart, we should be all right,” Elliott said.
D.C. United, meanwhile, isn’t in much better shape.
Defender Eddie Pope is with the U.S. national team in Guatemala and forward Raul Diaz Arce is with Cienfuegos and El Salvador’s national team for a home game Sunday against Honduras. Jeff Agoos and Ben Olsen, two other U.S. national team players, are sidelined by injury.
It gets worse.
The Bolivian duo of Jaime Moreno and Marco Etcheverry--who is disenchanted with MLS and threatening to leave the league at season’s end--are two significant players who are available, but that’s about all. Even 17-year-old Bobby Convey, a revelation in an otherwise bleak season, has a twisted ankle and is listed as questionable.
Rongen said before Wednesday night’s 2-2 tie with the Tampa Bay Mutiny that the team needed to win seven of its final 10 games to have a chance of making the playoffs. Now, it has to win seven of nine.
“We’re on life support, no doubt about it,” Rongen told the Washington Post earlier this week. “We’ve just got to determine whether we pull the plug ourselves or we let the opponents do that.”
A loss tonight would guarantee three-time champion D.C. United its first losing season. In its first four seasons, the club finished 16-16, 21-11, 24-8 and 23-9.
“We’re running out of time,” Etcheverry told the Post. “We have to win almost all of our games, or else the season is over. I don’t want that to happen.”
The problem is, with each loss and each setback, the mood among the players has dipped lower. Infighting has bubbled to the surface, as when Rongen and midfielder Richie Williams got into an arm-waving, shouting match on the sideline in Dallas last weekend after Rongen took Williams out of the game.
The troublesome thing about all this from the MLS standpoint is that the league’s championship game is set for RFK Stadium on Oct. 15. Washington fans have stuck with their team--average attendance is 17,282--but might be thoroughly disillusioned by then. What two neutral teams will draw is anyone’s guess.
